Victor Clube

Stace Victor Murray Clube (born 22 October 1934 in London) is an English astrophysicist.

He was educated at St. John's and Christ Church, Oxford. He played first-class cricket for Oxford University.^[1] He appeared seventeen times for the university between 1956 and 1959, but only won a Blue—the awarding of the Oxford "colours" to sportsmen—in his first year there, appearing in the 1956 University match against Cambridge. During that match, which finished as a draw, he took just one wicket with his off break bowling.^[2]

Clube obtained his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis titled Interferometry of the Solar Chemosphere and Photosphere^[3] and went on to become a professional astrophysicist and astronomer. He has been Dean of the Astrophysics Department of Oxford University,^[4] and has worked at the observatories of Edinburgh, Armagh and Cape Town.^[5] He is known primarily for his work in collaboration with Bill Napier and others on the theory of "coherent catastrophism"^[6][7]

The asteroid 6523 Clube is named after him.^[8]

Selected bibliography

• The Cosmic Serpent (1982), with Bill Napier
• The Cosmic Winter (1990), with Bill Napier
• The Origin of Comets (1990), with M. E. Bailey and Bill Napier
• Close encounters with a million comets (15 July 1982). New Scientist 95, (1314), 148-151, with Bill Napier
• The microstructure of terrestrial catastrophism (1984). Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc. 211, 953-968, with Bill Napier
• The dynamics of armageddon (1988). Speculations of Science and Technology 11 (4), 255-264; reprinted in Zysman, Milton and Clark Whelton (eds.) (1990). Catastrophism 2000: A Sourcebook for the Conference Reconsidering Velikovsky, Toronto, Canada, pp. 5–16.
• Giant Comets and Their Role in History, Chapter 14 in Singer, S. Fred (ed.) (1990). The Universe and Its Origin: From Ancient Myth to Present Reality and Fantasy, Paragon House, New York. ISBN 0-89226-049-1, pp. 145–161.
• The structure and evolution of the Taurid Complex (1991). Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc. 251, 632-648, with D. I. Steel and D. J. Asher.
• The Fundamental Role of Giant Comets in Earth History (1992). Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy 54, 179-193.
• Hazards from Space: Comets in History and Science (1994). Chapter 7 in Glen, William (ed.) (1994). The Mass-extinction Debates: How Science Works in a Crisis, Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2285-4. pp. 152–169.
• Are Impacts Correlated in Time? (1994). In Gehrels, Tom (ed.) (1994). Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids, University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-1505-0. pp. 463–478; with D.I. Steel, D.J. Asher and W.M. Napier.
• The Nature of Punctuational Crises and the Spenglerian Model of Civilization (1995). Vistas in Astronomy 39, 673-698.^[9]
• An Exceptional Cosmic Influence and its Bearing on the Evolution of Human Culture as Evident in the Apparent Early Development of Mathematics and Astronomy (2003). Astrophysics and Space Science 285, 521-532.

References

External links

• Greenbeltastro.org